Digital Specimen Enrollment

Join the Future of Scientific Collections

Your specimens hold answers to the planet’s most urgent challenges – it is time to make them more discoverable, connected, and impactful than ever before!

 

Digital Specimen Data Enrollment 

DiSSCo aims to facilitate the smooth and strategic onboarding of biological and geological specimen datasets into the DiSSCo Digital Specimen data infrastructure towards full operation.  Digital Specimen DOIs (Digital Object Identifier) will be provided by DiSSCo as a free service for specimen hosting institutions globally so that all digital representations of specimens become findable, accessible, citable, and interoperable. 
By enrolling your specimen datasets with DiSSCo (Distributed System of Scientific Collections), your institution becomes part of an international movement transforming the way science, policy, and society access and use natural history data.

Why enroll?

Global visibility

Elevate your collections to an international audience through DiSSCo’s FAIR-compliant, machine-actionable infrastructure.

Persistent identity

Get persistent identifiers (DOIs) to your specimens and specimen images – making them citable and traceable.

Interoperability

Be ready for publication of enriched specimen data in GBIF and GeoCase using emerging standards like DiSSCo’s openDS, the DarwinCore Data Package and the DarwinCore Mineral Extension.

Research impact

Unlock new potential for cross-disciplinary research, AI-powered discovery, and policy-driven decision-making through data enhancement using DiSSCo’s automated annotation framework.

Digital readiness

Be part of Europe’s leading initiative for digital specimen infrastructure – and get support to get there.

 

The Time Is Now.

Be among the first to take advantage of Digital Specimen DOIs and the DiSSCo infrastructure. Note that in 2025, we will create only 20M DOIs. Pre-registering will get you on the waiting list for the coming years, maybe already this year.

How does it work?

Pre-register

Pre-register your specimen datasets to get on the waiting list

Minimum requirements

Make sure you meet the minimum requirements

Choose your preference

You can opt for DOIs only or full Digital Specimen

Questions?

Who can enroll specimen datasets in DiSSCo?

Datasets can be enrolled by organisations that host natural science collections (museums, herbaria, universities, Research Infrastructures). As a European Research Infrastructure, DiSSCo will prioritize datasets from organisations in Europe. 

What are the minimum requirements for a dataset?
  • A Darwin Core or ABCD dataset 
    • containing records about specimens,
    • published online, 
    • containing a unique identifier for each physical specimen object such as a catalog number or globally unique identifier (other data is optional)
  • Associated digital media, if provided, need to have a public accessible URL
  • Data needs to have a CC-0 or CC-By license or be public domain for both the specimen description data and included digital media. Specimen data with other licenses may get a DOI but DiSSCo cannot create a digital specimen object for them

A dataset must be accompanied by a ROR (or a WikiData ID if a ROR is not available) for the collection hosting institution.

I am already publishing my datasets in GBIF, should I enroll in DiSSCo too?

Yes. While GBIF focuses on providing global access to biodiversity occurrence data, DiSSCo focuses on digitisation, enrichment and quality improvement of specimen data. Enrolling your datasets in DiSSCo ensures that each specimen can be referenced with a DOI and that specimens get a digital specimen object which can be community curated and extended, with the help of automated annotation tools.

How do I start the enrollment process?

Any institutional representative can start the process by filling in the enrollment form to pre-register datasets. These will be put on a waiting list for enrollment (a limited number will already be enrolled in 2025). A data hosting agreement is not required.

datasets will be prioritised by scoring them as follows:

  • Dataset has a valid reason for high priority (4 points)
  • Dataset provider has signed DiSSCo MoU (2 points)
  • Dataset provider is a DiSSCo paying partner (2 points)
  • Dataset provider is a European facility (1 point)
  • Dataset includes type specimens (1 point)

Datasets with the same score will be prioritised further by date of pre-registration.

We will also take into account: dataset size, covered disciplines and countries, this to limit underrepresentation of countries, disciplines or small datasets and get an even distribution.

Will my dataset receive DOIs?

Yes. Each digital specimen and each associated media object will receive a persistent identifier (DOI) via DiSSCo’s PID infrastructure in collaboration with DataCite. The DataCite fee for the DOIs is paid by DiSSCo.

What quality checks are applied?

DiSSCo runs harmonization and validation services to ensure:

  • Consistent use of taxonomic names (through harmonization with Catalog of Life)
  • Mandatory metadata fields are filled
  • Data is harmonized to the open Digital Specimen data model (openDS). This uses terms from DarwinCore (and other standards) and adds semantics to the data to support automated processes for finding, improving and enriching data.

Note that data validation is currently limited: 

  • Some data structure testing will be done by test loading the dataset in our Sandbox
  • A few key open Digital Specimen terms  (e.g. ods:physicalSpecimenIDType, ods:organisationID) will be mapped manually through our orchestration service, based on provided information and manual dataset analysis (DwC fields will be mapped automatically).
  • There is currently NO automated link checking, limited duplicate detection, NO controlled vocabulary matching. This will be improved in the future depending on how our stakeholders prioritise this. Digital specimens are mutable objects, it is planned to improve data quality over time with new automated processes.
How long does enrollment take?

This depends on the priority your dataset gets and the date of pre-registration. We can enroll only a limited number of datasets in 2025 and will extend that in 2026 and 2027. Your datasets will be put on a waiting list and you will be notified once your dataset has been added. 

The process of creating digital specimens and DOIs for all specimen objects in Europe and beyond (specimens that already have a digital presence), is foreseen to take a few years depending on available resources.

Can I update or correct my dataset after enrollment?

Yes. DiSSCo supports versioning for each digital specimen and media object. Every change is tracked, and older versions remain accessible to preserve provenance and to make it possible to reference a specific version. A dataset will be checked for updates once a week. Note that you should  NOT change any physical specimen identifiers in your dataset unless you have included the digital specimen DOIs in your dataset, since it will result in duplicate digital specimens for a specimen.

Where will my specimen data be visible?

Digital specimens based on enrolled datasets become discoverable via:

  • DiSSCover portal (a portal for discovery and annotation)
  • DataCite Commons
  • Global aggregators such as GBIF and other Research Infrastructures, when they start to include digital specimens
Who do I contact for support?
  • General enquiries: DiSSCo CSO (info@dissco.eu)
  • Technical support: DiSSCo Helpdesk (support@dissco.JitBit.com)